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Kant on Free Will and Theoretical Rationality1* http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/ideasyvalores.v67n166.62775 Kant on Free Will and Theoretical Rationality*1 • Libre albedrío y racionalidad teórica en Kant Daniel M. Wolt**2 Universidade de São Paulo - São Paulo - Brazil Article received on February 12, 2017; approved on July 27, 2017. * This work was written in part with the aid of financial support from the São Paulo Research Foundation (Fapesp; Grant n.° 2016/05983-0). ** [email protected] How to cite this article: mla: Wolt, D. “Kant on Free Will and Theoretical Rationality.” Ideas y Valores 67.166 (2018): 181-198. apa: Wolt, D. (2018). Kant on Free Will and Theoretical Rationality. Ideas y Valores, 67 (166), 181-198. chicago: Daniel Wolt. “Kant on Free Will and Theoretical Rationality.” Ideas y Valores 67, n.° 166 (2018): 181-198. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. ideas y valores • vol. lxvii • n.o 166 • abril 2018 • issn 0120-0062 (impreso) 2011-3668 (en línea) • bogotá, colombia • pp. 181 - 198 [182] daniel m. wolt abstract The focus of this essay is Kant’s argument in theGroundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (gms) iii that regarding oneself as rational implies regarding oneself as free. After setting out an interpretation of how the argument is meant to go (§§1-2), I argue that Kant fails to show that regarding oneself as free is incompatible with accepting universal causal determinism (§3). However, I suggest that the argument succeeds in showing that regarding oneself as rational is inconsistent with accepting universal causal determinism if one accepts a certain, plausible view of the explana- tion of events (§4). Keywords: I. Kant, free will, Groundwork for the metaphysics of morals, theoretical rationality. resumen El ensayo se enfoca en el argumento de Kant en la Fundamentación de la metafísica de las costumbres (gms) iii según el cual considerarse racional implica verse a uno mismo como libre. Se interpreta la forma en que debe entenderse el argumento (§§1-2) y se afirma que Kant no logra demostrar que considerarse libre es incompati- ble con la aceptación del determinismo casual universal (§3). No obstante, se sugiere que el argumento sí logra demostrar que considerarse a uno mismo como racional es incompatible con la aceptación del determinismo casual universal, si se acepta una cierta versión plausible de la explicación de los eventos (§4). Palabras clave: I. Kant, libre albedrío, Fundamentación de la metafísica de las costumbres, racionalidad teórica. departamento de filosofía • facultad de ciencias humanas • universidad nacional de colombia kant on free will and theoretical rationality [183] The Argument in Context Philosophers most often deal with the question of free will in connection with moral issues. For example, the question of whether determinism and free will are compatible is usually of interest to people who are concerned about the implications of determinism for moral responsibility: free will is a prerequisite for moral responsibility, the thought goes, so if determinism rules out free will and determinism is a fact, then none of us are morally responsible for our actions. It is unsurprising, then, that Kant’s main interest in free will also has to do with questions pertaining to morality. What is surprising, though, is that Kant not only thinks that freedom of some kind must be presup- posed in order to regard ourselves as morally responsible, but also that freedom must be presupposed in order to regard ourselves as theoreti- cally rational (i.e. capable of rationality in the theoretical, as opposed to the practical, domain). But why exactly Kant thinks this is not en- tirely easy to determine. Here I will focus on the argument as it occurs in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, though, of course, in attempting to explain that argument, I will make reference to what he says about the issue elsewhere as well. Kant’s goal in the third section of the Groundwork is to show that the categorical imperative applies to all rational agents. In order to do so, Kant needs to show that all rational agents must be regarded as free in some way, because in order for the categorical imperative to apply to an agent, that agent must be capable of acting or failing to act accord- ingly. Thus, Kant begins the first part of section iii (“The Concept of Freedom is the Key to the Explanation of the Autonomy of the Will”) with the analysis of the concept of freedom. He starts with a negative characterization: freedom is a property of the will “that it [the will] can be efficient independently of alien causes determining it”gms ( 446; cf. kpvv 33 and krv a543/b 562).1 To say that the free will operates “inde- pendently of alien causes” is not, however, to say that it does not operate according to any cause. On the contrary, since the will is a cause, and Kant thinks that all causes must act in accordance with laws, even the free will must act in accordance with some laws. So, in order for a will to be free, it must operate according to laws that it imposes on itself. This leads to Kant’s positive characterization of freedom as “the will’s property of being a law to itself” (g iv447; cf. kpv v33 and ms vi214). Equivalently, a free will is an autonomous will. Now, in gms ii, Kant had argued that for a will to act autono- mously is for it to act in accordance with the categorical imperative, I thank Des Hogan, Tim Stoll and Dimitris Tsementzsis for this discussion. 1 All translations are Gregor (1996). ideas y valores • vol. lxvii • n.o 166 • abril 2018 • issn 0120-0062 (impreso) 2011-3668 (en línea) • bogotá, colombia • pp. 181 - 198 [184] daniel m. wolt the moral law. Thus, Kant famously remarks: “a free will and a will under moral laws is one and the same” (ibd.) and therefore to show that the moral law applies to all rational beings, it will suffice to show that those beings are free: “If, therefore, freedom of the will is presupposed, morality together with its principle follows from it by mere analysis of its concept” (ibd.). The question of whether freedom of the will can be presupposed is taken up in the next part of section three, which is titled “Freedom Must be Presupposed as a Property of the Will of All Rational Beings.” After setting up the task as that of giving an a priori proof of freedom of the will (gms iv 447-448), Kant claims that if a rational being must view itself as free, or “must act under the idea of freedom”, then that being is free in a practical respect. By referring to the kind of freedom that he wants to show that all rational agents have as “freedom in a practical respect”, Kant is distinguishing his project from that of showing that every rational agent is in fact free, which Kant refers to as “freedom in a theoretical respect” (cf. Kant’s footnote to iv 448). To show that all ratio- nal agents have freedom in a theoretical respect would be to show that all rational agents are free. To show that all rational agents are free in a prac- tical respect, by contrast, would be merely to show that all rational agents must regard themselves as free. The reason why it is sufficient for Kant’s purposes to prove only that all rational beings are free in a practical re- spect is that being free in a practical respect means being committed to viewing the moral law as applying to oneself. For, as we said before, to be free is just to act in accordance with the moral law. Thus, the crucial part of the argument is the next step, in which Kant argues that all rational beings are free in a practical respect. It is in this portion of the argument that the key passage that I want to deal with occurs. Kant begins by asserting that for “[every rational being] we think of a reason that is practical, that is, has causality with respect to its objects” (giv 448). The idea that the will is a “causality with re- spect to objects” is meant to suggest that to have practical reason is to have a will that is capable of generating reasons for action from itself.2 Here Kant is making the same distinction we saw at the beginning of the section with respect to freedom. What Kant wants to say is that in order to view oneself as having a practical will, one must regard one’s will itself as generating motivation for acting. If one only views oneself as acting on the basis of impulses, then one cannot also view oneself as having a practical will. 2 The way Kant phrases it is somewhat difficult because he seems to imply that every will is a practical will. Regardless of whether Kant really thinks this, I will take him here to be talking about a specifically practical will. departamento de filosofía • facultad de ciencias humanas • universidad nacional de colombia kant on free will and theoretical rationality [185] Now, the passage that I want to focus on throughout the rest of this essay occurs immediately after the sentence just quoted. I quote it in full, labeling the two sentences for clarity in my later discussion: [1] Now, one cannot possibly think of a reason that would consciously receive direction from any other quarter with respect to its judgements, since the subject would then attribute the determination of his judgment not to his reason but to an impulse.
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